Skepticism

EVENTS

Being a good scientist doesn’t make one a good person

Latest example: Nobel prize winner Tim Hunt. It’s a real shame, too — I know his work, he’s one of the people who worked out details of the regulation of the cell cycle. Unfortunately, he’s also been revealed to be a sexist ignoramus.

In remarks yesterday before writers, scientists, and engineers attending the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, Hunt stood and after thanking the women journalists for making lunch, and warning attendees that he had a reputation as a male chauvinist, offered up his groundbreaking ideas on women in the field.

Let me tell you about my trouble with girls, Hunt said, according to science journalist Connie St Louis, who tweeted the most disgusting points in his unrecorded speech. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry. He continued that while he was in favor of single sex laboratories, he didn’t want to stand in the way of women.

All I can say is…fuck off, dinosaur. We’re better off without you in any position of authority.

It’s misogynist, but if only he had avoided identifying people with their genders there would be a kernel of realization in there. Namely, that since Time Hunt apparently used to criticize colleagues until they broke into tears, they probably shouldn’t have to work with people like him.

Glad I wasn’t the only–or even the first!–to mention that long-enough-to-macramé nose hair. I think I know what’s been going on: The female scientists in his lab are always trying hard to not stare at the bales of hay peeking out of his nostrils and he’s been mistaking their uncomfortable, demure behaviour as ‘falling in love with him’.

Just a guess but I’d be totally unsurprised to find that he’s an insufferable prick to everyone, man or woman, he works with or comes in contact with. He was probably that way before winning the Nobel prize but, after, it ratcheted up to 11.

His list of three things that happen when women are in the lab does not include WOMEN (not girls) doing you know- scientific work? Does he think they are there to find a husband?! Fucking sexist assclam!

– members of national assemblies
– members of governments of states
– members of international courts
– University rectors
– professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology
– directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes
– those who’ve been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
– Board members of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
– current members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
– former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
– former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee

Read through that a couple times. There is that bit of the nod to “academics” and so forth, but for the most part, this seems very much to be an inside group of insiders playing to an insider culture and insider politic who may not be promoting excellence, per se.

And, of course, we all just drink that stuff up, so very impressed we are by just the invocation of the word, Nobel, since “Nobel” is simply “prestigious” and “high honor” and, I dunno, “godlike”.

It’s funny because it makes us angry.
…
Reread the article. He wasn’t joking. He is clueless.

I recall that “joke” from 40-some years ago when it was used in an SNL skit, with the setting at some kind of community meeting, the line being delivered by Dan Aykroyd at the podium, and with Jane Curtin and Gilda Radner bowing on the sidelines — and it was funny then only because the audience knew that if Dan pulled something like that in real life, Jane and Gilda would have stomped on him.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Hunt recalled it from the same TV show, and, being permanently clueless, has thought it was funny ever since. He has probably been chuckling over it for 40 years.

The original story apparently appeared in The Daily Beast, which while trashy is to my knowledge not a particularly conservative website. I was therefore somewhat surprised to see that most of the comments on the story there support these antediluvian ideas about gender. Or is that simply the trashiness showing?

I have seen Hunt talk, and his persona was distinctly old-school donish and detached, so it is unsurprising to me that he is a sexist dinosaur. Any supervisor who is reducing researchers to tears probably needs to learn a less aggressive or unpleasant management style.

I know Paul Nurse slightly better, and aside from the fact that he is an affable overachiever who one can easily feel jealous of, I’ve never found anything to dislike about him.

Nobels give people a platform to show themselves off in all their glory.

1. I really can’t anymore. I’m not being upset anymore because being upset at this shit requires having energy to spend. They’Re wearing us down, down, down to the point we simply throw up our hands and let it be.
2. Stop using “clueless”. Those people aren’t lacking clues, they’re lacking human decency, empathy and ethics.

Geez Louise. If, and I say if, that was humor, it was in appalling bad taste. But since he seemed serious, it was in even more appallingly bad taste — he knew his views were offensive, but he just dumped a steaming pile on the table in front of everyone, deliberately.

During an event honoring women in science…and nobody stood up and clearly and calmly told him to fuck off? Because that would have been absolutely, 100% apropriate.
The really sad thing is that this disgustingly sexist, toxic arsehole is by no means alone, Nobel prize or no Noble prize, there are still a lot of mysoginists in science…I’d say i can’t fucking wait for them to die off, but i know full well that they are well represented in the new generations of scientists aswell…
Fuck them, fuck the lot of them….

har di har har the old git thinks he is funny and can laugh from his lofty perch of authority and privilege all smug and securer with his prize. From his picture it is plane he will be dead sooner than later and will not be missed many.
uncle frogy

unclefroggy
And there’s many young misogynists ready to take his place. While time might get us rid of this particular asshole, it does nothing to solve the issue. He trains young scientists, passes down his attitudes, they pass them on…

Sorry, PZ, I object to the entire concept encapsulated in the title – being that sexist also makes him a bad scientist. Is there really any possibility that he can evaluate any research with a woman’s name attached and not downgrade its importance? Is there a chance that he’s a fair reviewer? How many women have gotten bad paper reviews or bad funding application reviews from him just because he unconsciously dismissed them? How many good future scientists did he reject or run off? No. Doing good research projects does not make you a good scientist. There is a lot more to being a scientist than doing good research. You have to contribute to the field as a good peer reviewer and a good mentor too, to be a good scientist. Otherwise you’re just a savant at benchwork. And this guy wasn’t only good at one part, he was actively hostile in the others. Nope. He does not get to be called a good scientist.

The original story apparently appeared in The Daily Beast, which while trashy is to my knowledge not a particularly conservative website. I was therefore somewhat surprised to see that most of the comments on the story there support these antediluvian ideas about gender. Or is that simply the trashiness showing?

Welcome to the Internet. Your welcome pack includes a laminated copy of Lewis’s Law, and a soothing picture of a kitten for when you can’t even.

A site being “not particularly conservative” is no barrier to misogynist douchery. They infest everywhere.

Well, that is some (sadly not exactly unexpected) weapon’s grade misogynistic arsehattery from Hunt. Unfortunately, and as noted by various commenters upthread, he is far from alone in his backward, bigoted attitudes – there is a pervasive culture of wholly unrepentant, indeed actually proud and perversely self-righteous, sexism within the scientific community, as a reflection of our broader society that has been undergoing a twisted rennaissance in open misogyny over the last few years.

I wish Hunt was a lone, irrelevant sexist dinosaur galloping toward extinction. Unfortunately, it seems far more accurate to describe him as still reflecting an all too pervasive zeitgheist; the common attitudes among the still unduly powerful and privileged cis/het White guys who continue to hold the purse strings (and, with them, the power) and so are still able to marginalise women when it comes to seniority and research and funding priority within scientific fields.

Hunt doesn’t represent the last spasming twitches of a defeated foe; he is the face of a toxic bigotry that is, despressingly, very much ascendent again. People like him would probably be the first to claim that ‘real’ sexism (que Dear Muslima) is a thing of the past in the Western world, and so continuing to talk about is unnecessary raking up of the past and somehow offensive.

after thanking the women journalists “for making lunch,” and warning attendees that he had a reputation as a male chauvinist,

I’ll first ASSuME that it was just a turn of phrase; to thank the journalists for “making” the lunch, rather than, more correctly, providing the lunch.
Moving along…
He said he had a reputation as a male chauvinist, and then blithely went along and proved it?
From that I’ll deduce that Nobel is an award for a specific achievement and not overall exceptionalism. His reasoning got him to figure out all that cell biology stuff, but didn’t help him with any social skills. It’s tempting, but irrational, to extrapolate; that the reason he loves all the girls in his lab: cuz they do all the work, that he can then slap his name at the top of their papers and get all the credit awarded to him for herding his “lab rats”. That’s too far, just had to say it. Attempting to show Hunt how NOT to do it. I’m sure he reads this blog and is ruminating on all the “advice” we’re providing for this “out of time” chauvinist. *wink*

I agree with carlie @27. His asshattery is, in addition to the other points above, helping to reinforce the idea that “science is for the menz ” and women shouldn’t bother with it. How many brilliant young scientists are now/will be pursuing other careers because of this shit for brains and his ilk? No. He is not a good scientist.

Moggie @ 28 & reddiaperbaby1942 – “Daily Beast” regularly features writing by such luminaries as Meghan McCain and Mike Barnicle. I know they have other authors contributing but I would definitely characterize it overall as being right-leaning.

This topic has been discussed on the BBC World service. Maybe his stupid remarks will help raise awareness. Most of the women scientists on the programme were appealing to men in science to speak up. Just like PZ.

And I still don’t care. One’s accomplishments stand for themselves and, as lovely as public recognition is, that recognition is always offered as a supplement to the prize giver’s own sense of worth over and above the public, coming out of the excess enjoyed by the prize giver, and which excess was not necessarily earned, but is given away as though it were earned. That is, I think, a balanced perspective on the “prestige” of such prizes.

I get it, he was being ironically chauvinistic. See, it’s all proven by the fact that he first warned everyone, and then spouting off and proving it. See, he can talk about how he himself is such a terrible person while being that terrible person. And he wins, because he’s not trying to hide even the worst parts of his character! Woo!
In other words, he’s just an asshole. He could just as well have said “Well, I have nothing against women in the lab, but…” except he would probably say ‘girls’. ‘Cause we never age past 17 and a half (sometimes, I kinda wish…).